Steampunk’d Social Networking

Artist Paul St. George’ssteampunk sculpture wryly suggests that using technology to create social networks predates the web, wiki and blog by at least a century.

When it opened to the public two weeks ago, the London Telegraph described St. George’s Telectroscope as “looking like something from the Victorian era” or “a device from 1950s science fiction.”

Indeed, St. George claims to have “happened upon a packet of dusty papers in a trunk in his grandmother’s attic” discovering “a veritable treasure trove: diaries, diagrams, correspondence, scribbled calculations” that were the work of his great-grandfather, “an eccentric Victorian engineer named Alexander Stanhope St. George.” The drawings and writing described “a Telectroscope… allowing people to see through a tunnel… stretching from one side of the world to the other.”

Science fiction or science fact? If you’re in New York or London you have until June 15th to see the Telectroscope in person and decide for yourself — and be sure to invite friends from the other side meet you and wave. Here’s what you’ll find at Brooklyn’s Fulton Ferry Landing: